[jyl]

Another house project coming up.

It is past time to get my house exterior painted. It is the previously-mentioned (air circulator thread) 1911 Four-Square, with narrow cedar siding. It was last painted about 24 years ago. About 15% of the exterior has paint is in bad shape: peeling, chipping, checking, siding loose or gouged or very rough, nails protruding. The rest is okay.

I have two bids so far: $17,000 and $21,000. The second bid is from a company that painted my neighbor’s house. I’ve gone over and inspected the results: it’s fine. The only thing that bothers me a little is some places at eye-level where the outline of the old chipped or cracked paint is visible, as if they didn’t adequately fill and feather the bare spots with the painted spots after scraping off the loose paint. That will bug me. Otherwise, I’d be content with that result on my house, and can get on their schedule for September.

(I’m not willing to pay for the top-tier paint jobs where they remove every bit of the old paint down to bare wood. My other neighbor had that done, the painters were working on his house for months, it looks !great! but cost $60,000 . . . )

So I am thinking of spending a few evenings a week for the next few months prepping the worst areas that are at eye level (up to about 12’, where flaws will bug me the most). Scraping, re-nailing, filling, sanding, caulking. The idea being that the painters can then focus their prep on the higher-up parts that I’m too chicken to climb up to.

I did a test patch yesterday. Looks like I can do 4 sq ft in a hour or two.

So, my questions are:

1. Is this a dumb idea? Should I just leave it all up to the pros?

2. Any tips for doing this work? The prep process ?seems? rather straightforward, but are there pitfalls and subtleties that are easy to miss?

3. In general, any thoughts on having an old house like this painted?